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Topic: worlds article (Read 934 times)

coops

Pretty cool article in the Lawrence paper about worlds with quote from our own Rick Rothstein. If you look through the comments it makes it pretty clear we are fighting a long uphill battle to change the perception of the sport to those who have not played. They think we are all still a bunch of dirty hippies slingin' frisbees. Too bad we can't get those people to come watch the worlds and the grace and power of the world's greatest players.

Pretty cool article in the Lawrence paper about worlds with quote from our own Rick Rothstein. If you look through the comments it makes it pretty clear we are fighting a long uphill battle to change the perception of the sport to those who have not played. They think we are all still a bunch of dirty hippies slingin' frisbees. Too bad we can't get those people to come watch the worlds and the grace and power of the world's greatest players.

We ARE a bunch of hippies slingin' frisbees. Some of us are a bit more organized than others, some are a bit cleaner than others, but hippies nonetheless.

Keizer

Overall, I could care less about the public's perception of our sport. We have obviously proven ourselves to local city leaders, and it has resulted in numerous courses in our area. Who else's opinion matters if you're not into it for the money? I personally am not in it for the money, so there's no reason for me to sit around and hope that the sport gets more people playing and eventually grows into the mainstream. In fact, since I'm not into it for the money, it would actually benefit me if the sport stays fairly low-profile. That way, equipment will always be cheap, and the sport will always be free to play and free to watch. I couldn't stand it if I had to adhere to a dress code, pay $20, walk through turnstiles and go through security checks to get into a disc golf event. Then the anti-smoking nazis will certainly end up having their way, and the whole freedom and laid-backness that drew me to the sport in the first place will have gone by the wayside.

Of course, I understand that those who have a financial interest in the sport are going to try to make it grow to mainstream. I would do the same thing if it was the method in which I feed my family. But for the regular Joe types, I think being concerned about the sport growing is one of those thing where you'd better be careful what you wish for.

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coops

While I agree with you in a lot of ways Keizer I think, too, that a basic interest in wanting the sport to grow doesn't have to be financially based. Of course I would love to make money off of doing something that I loved, but ignoring the fact that is infeasible I think the other major factor for why I want the sport to grow is to see what can happen to it for the sport of it. Think about this, the greatest disc golfer ever to be born maybe won't even ever find out about or will be driven away from it because of negative stereotypes. The more people that find out about it and grow to love it the better it is for the competition, as we are seeing a little bit now. Instead of one guy being "the guy" like Climo was in the 90's there have been a number of other players who have gotten into the sport and are tearing it up and stretching the limits of the sport, which is, I believe, the essence of sport. The other reason to want the sport to grow is to allow for more courses, and better courses, to be built. While it will never be like ball golf with architects designing what they want the course to be like and then importing the materials, a little bit of that couldn't hurt. Natural landscapes, while they are beautiful and contain within them a sublime understanding that they are part of nature and we are just using it, there is still the reality that ball golf courses look just as beautiful. Not every course needs to be Winthrop Gold or Pickard or even Water Works, but the occasional interference of man in the natural landscape can and does create more challenging and better quality courses. Instead of being limited, then, to the select few awesome signature holes that can be created with a talented designer and a good tract of land the courses could contain 9, 18, or even 27 signature holes which would only make competition better. Anyway, like I said, I agree with a lot of what you say, but wanting to grow the sport has more than just financial intensives.